


ink long since dried

by soundthebells (kosy)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Prompt Fic, season five
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:34:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24332140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosy/pseuds/soundthebells
Summary: The world ends. Martin can't afford to be poetic about it.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 24
Kudos: 75





	ink long since dried

**Author's Note:**

> this is a prompt fill from tumblr, specifically the word "pinprick". i love the idea of love at the end of the world and i'm trying to get better at short fic, so here we are. enjoy the read!

The world ends. And the first day (day being subjective here, Martin supposes) was awful because it couldn’t be anything else, and so was the next day, and the next. But eventually all the awful collapses in on itself and the part of him meant to be processing the awful shuts off entirely, and then he can claw his way back into something approximating normalcy. Processing things is a luxury he has long since given up. He hardly misses it any longer. Screams of terror in the distance, fine. Bloodshot human eyes filling the sky, fine. Earth constantly trembling as if afraid or angry or both, fine. Tea collapsing into a hissing, many-legged thing, fine.

Jon takes it harder, but that’s probably fair considering he’s the one who did it. Not the one who was responsible, mind, but the one who did it. The world was over and the world was still ending and the world was his. Martin can be impartial about these things. Removed. He’s well-practiced, after all. Jon cannot. To be anything other than grieving, agonized and begging forgiveness and staring blankly at walls and digging his nails into his own scarred skin—well, that would mean losing himself entirely. Embracing the monstrosity he is so afraid of being. This is also fine.

The world ends. Martin cannot afford to be a poet. Writing things would mean feeling things, which would mean feeling fear, which would mean—he doesn’t know. Probably nothing good. He feels only what he wants to feel these days, and that doesn’t make for particularly evocative poetry. He takes his little leatherbound notebook with him anyway when they leave, more out of habit than anything else. Even when he was allowing himself to be consumed by the Lonely and still wasn’t writing, he kept the notebook with him, if only because it was a Moleskine and it was one of the few things he’d ever really gotten just for himself and it had cost him a fair amount back when he’d bought it back in, what, 2013?

Sometimes, when they’re taking an unnecessary break or Jon is letting one of the world’s nightmares spill out into the tape recorder, he flips through his old poems. Nothing since late 2017. He’d tried poetry after the Unknowing. It had helped him before then—hell, he’s got free verse from when Prentiss trapped him in his flat—but wasn’t much use after that terrible summer. Because, Christ, what do you say? Do you write a sonnet about how somebody who was once your friend exploded? Compose a fucking limerick about how you spend three evenings a week next to the hospital bed of the man you love? It all felt so pathetically trite.

Reading through it now, Martin wishes he could laugh at his past self. Bad rhymes, forced imagery, stupidly obvious metaphor, simple allusion. All carefully scrawled in the notebook in the purple-inked pen he had been so fond of back then and lost somewhere along the line. Maybe while moving offices. It was hard to say. He _wishes_ he could laugh. If he could, he could probably remove himself from the situation, say _this man is not me,_ say _thank God I am different now._ But the thing is he’s not sure.

Has he grown? Of course he has. There’s no question about that. Has he changed? Again, yes. He thinks he is happy with who he has become.

But the Martin who crossed out paragraphs about how he was maybe falling in love with his boss, who was enamored with the endless crowds of London, who extolled the beauty of the birds he sometimes fed at the park, who liked to tip his face up to let the rain hit it even though the drops made it hard to see through his glasses, who appreciated things like the sun on his skin and food in his belly and the way Tim grinned at him when he was saying something flirty (and only maybe-joking) and Sasha’s hugs and Jon’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments of sweetness and a really good book and nights in and nights out and unexpected Fridays off—

That’s still him. He wants it to still be him.

Martin turns the notebook over in his hands, thumbs through the pages until he reaches the next blank, and pauses. He hadn’t packed a pen, come to think of it.

For a moment, he contemplates just dropping it. Leaving it on the ground right where he is. The earth is scorched and littered with rubbish anyway. Plenty of things lying in the dirt. Books nobody would ever read again, old clothing, guitar picks, smashed pots that may have once held houseplants. The detritus of any lost civilization. It’s weird to walk through the graveyard of your own world.

He looks at Jon. It’s a rare moment of stillness. He’s sitting on the ground. His eyes are shut (though Martin knows he must be seeing anyway), his head bowed toward the earth as if he’s praying. The comparison startles him, both because it’s a comparison he made consciously and because prayer wasn’t even a thought that had crossed his mind in months (days? Time was difficult without sleep to mark it). The idea of praying here and now felt almost blasphemous. Far too private and sacred for this wrecked land. Jon’s not religious anyways. Hard to be, after seeing what they’ve both seen.

Martin keeps looking: the scattering of faint freckles on his cheekbones, the hair like charcoal and ash, the scars that twist over most of his exposed skin, the rumpled clothing, the bony hands. He looks otherworldly. He looks like he could only be of this world.

Jon turns his head slowly and looks back. The movement might have been ominous, but there’s a smile on his face, however quivering and weak. His eyes are dark and always have been, and still there’s that pinprick of light that shines through. Hopeful. Intellectually, Martin knows it’s just a reflection, a glare from external light. Everybody has it. But this is Jon’s and therefore precious. The logic of any lover.

“Ready to keep going?” Jon asks.

Martin puts the notebook back into his bag, takes a breath, and nods. “Yeah.”

The world ends. Jon takes his hand, and together they continue on.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! if you'd like, visit me on tumblr [@boneroutes](https://boneroutes.tumblr.com), and please leave a comment/kudos if you feel inclined!


End file.
